Luke 4:3-4 NLT
Then the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone.’”
One immediate challenge with persevering is that we never know at the start how long we shall need to endure. Here Jesus faces his first approach from the devil. We know with the benefit of scripture that this season will be for 40 days, around six weeks. Jesus is unlikely to have known how long he was to face temptation in the desert. What he discovers is that the devil wants to mess with his mind. What’s more, the devil approaches him after 40 days of desert life. One imagines Jesus is at a low point for he has been fasting and would have been in great need of food. When we are tested, it is our resolve that is slowly challenged and we become increasingly vulnerable to Satan’s tricks.
The experience of the desert generally leaves us feeling distant from God. Like Jesus, the enemy will whisper in our ears something that in itself is reasonable and logical. After all, the Son of God is a miracle-worker and so perhaps this authority is for his own benefit. Jesus resists. None of us dare take action until and unless God speaks. When I relieve my pressure through human ingenuity, I remove myself from the space in which God can act and I can both learn and grow.
I discovered that during my early life where I leaned on my own understanding, classically trained, academically astute and full of human passion and energy, I failed to learn much about leaning on God. When I found myself lost in the desert where I literally ran out of solutions arising from human imagination, I was ill-prepared to trust God. I felt acute fear and was challenged by the devil hour after hour. My Christian life began to unravel, since I was naked before both God and the devil and had little but human resolve to resist the mayhem of my mind.
QUESTION: Are you a problem-solver that struggles to wait and trust God for an answer?
PRAYER: Help me today to walk with “faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7, NIV)

Released on 27 Feb 2020